Arieh Karger

October 29, 1937 - August 28, 2012

Obituary

Arieh Karger was born in Breslau, Germany in 1937 and escaped with his parents and sister to Palestine in 1938. He spent his first years near Haifa before moving with his family to Rehovot where his father worked at the Weizmann Institute of Science. At a very young age, Arieh became one of the first Amateur Radio operators in Israel, and used this skill to save the life of a Bulgarian teen who needed antibiotics. During the Sinai War in 1956 he served as a first lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Determined to obtain the best education possible, Arieh came to the US alone, immediately after completing his IDF service. He...

Arieh Karger was born in Breslau, Germany in 1937 and escaped with his parents and sister to Palestine in 1938. He spent his first years near Haifa before moving with his family to Rehovot where his father worked at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

At a very young age, Arieh became one of the first Amateur Radio operators in Israel, and used this skill to save the life of a Bulgarian teen who needed antibiotics. During the Sinai War in 1956 he served as a first lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Determined to obtain the best education possible, Arieh came to the US alone, immediately after completing his IDF service. He graduated from Brandeis in 1963 with a B.A. in Physics, and then earned an M.S. in Physics from OSU. He spent half his career at General Electric --- where he was awarded a patent for a cooling jacket for laser lamps, and developed an ion machining process featured on the cover of Applied Optics --- and the other half at MIT Lincoln Laboratory as an electro-optical engineer, where he pioneered optical techniques for battlefield detection of biological weapons.

In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Arieh voluntarily left his wife and three young children in Pennsylvania and returned to Israel to command his IDF unit. Shortly after the war, in 1974, he was sent to Israel as General Electric's senior representative to support the reconstruction of the IDF Air Force which had been devastated during the war.

The guiding poles of Arieh's life were family, Israel, and the Jewish people. He recently celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary surrounded by his wife, sister and brother-in-law, 3 children and their spouses, and 9 grandchildren, having established his family on strong Jewish roots.

Services will be held at the Stanetsky Memorial Chapel, 1668 Beacon St, BROOKLINE, MA on August 29 (today) at 3:00 PM. Interment at Beth El Cemetery, Baker St, West Roxbury. Shiva will be at his late residence in West Newton. In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy in his memory may be made to Brandeis University, Waltham MA or Congregation Beth El-Atereth Israel, Newton Centre, MA 02459.